


6AM at a Grocery Store

by twinkiesnail



Category: Original Work, Original Works
Genre: Adrian's narcissistic, Alternate Universe - College/University, But I still love her, Crack, Crush at First Sight, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fortune Telling, Humor, Ice Cream, Katherine is stupid, One-Shot, Sort Of, alcohol mention, and a dick, and pitiful, and sad, but I still love him, grocery stores, how do u do tags?, i suck at this honestly, skepticism of mystics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 12:31:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15315564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinkiesnail/pseuds/twinkiesnail
Summary: In which alcohol is the antagonist, Adrian is stubborn, fortune tellers are all fakes, and Katherine just wants a tub of ice cream to aid in her hangover.





	6AM at a Grocery Store

**Author's Note:**

> firstly, i'd just like to say that i am not at all a seasoned writer and would DEFINITELY love some feedback at the end of this piece, but mkae sure it's constructive criticism and not just criticism. thank you and happy reading! ^^

Expectations, Katherine had learned, never usually matched reality.  
As much as she wanted to say that she had learnt that from a stressful situation to have kids realize that fantasizing about the ideal scenario would usually end badly on their part, she did love telling her story - one that was nothing far from crazy, but she couldn’t lie about it being purely coincidental and molded in the working hands of fate.  
Really, though, she had a feeling that something big would happen at the supermarket, even if her judgement was clouded by a headache and perpetual stupidity caused by said headache.

Katherine was never one to believe in superstition, only poking fun at it to get on her brother’s nerves and watching his face contort in the funny, scrunchy-nosed way it did. But, somehow, her group of friends had managed to drag her into a fortune-teller’s office, draped in maroon-dyed velvet that was probably covering smoke machines and pulleys to make the room move magically and mystically while the hooded woman felt the apparently powerful spirits tell her a message. The old woman was bizarre, a creaky bag of bones covered by a thin layer of skin, with a voice with a deep, thick accent that Katherine couldn’t place her finger on. But she resonated with wisdom, and loneliness, somehow, so Katherine bypassed the strange Russian-y tinge to hear her speak.  
“My dear, the spirits are speaking loudly, so loudly,” she said, hands raised in the air and swaying back and forth in a beckoning motion, waving these supposed spirits’ voices closer to her ears, and a gust of cold blew up the edges of Katherine’s pants. It was freezing, curling around her ankles as if they were hands grasping at her legs and trying to pull her down, down, down.  
And for a moment, she believed.  
But that moment passed quickly when she looked down and her eyes glazed over an electric fan cleverly hidden behind a glass side-table stacked with melted candles.  
This would be phony anyway, she thought, so why did she even try?  
The old woman clicked her tongue, pulling her attention back to her fortune.  
“Follow my hands, child,” she roughly whispered, her aged voice coming out as crackly as a flickering flame, “and tell me what you see.”  
Her hands swung to the side, and the other side, again and again until Katherine carelessly blurted out, “Um, a - uh - a boat. A boat that would probably make you vomit if you stayed on it for too long.”  
Oh man.  
She could see the woman thinking, staring at Katherine’s pale form while wondering, ‘Wow, that fit the mood.’ So mysterious.  
Perfect, perfect. Who cared? Once again: phony. Phony and fake and Katherine didn’t even know why she was sitting there, probably about to be scammed of her fifteen dollars by some crazy old woman pretending to be a mystic or a medium or whatever to get more cash money because she didn’t get enough from her kids every month.  
But she took it, her fortune, on a piece of worn paper that the woman had given to her after nothing short of an overpriced and shallow presentation, with exactly what Katherine had expected: hidden smoke machines, mirrors, fans, and pulleys. And a shaking table, one that wasn’t too cleverly disguised as she could clearly feel the woman kicking it with her knee.  
But she didn’t mind. Really, she didn’t. It was stupid, sure, but at least she was helping some delusional poor soul and making her friends happy while doing it. Their excited young faces once she stepped out of the shop were nothing less than hilarious, eyes wide with anticipation and curiosity and a thirst for some juicy information, and that thirst being quenched when Katherine pulled the already crumpled paper out of the pocket of her yellow jacket and showed it to them with a lazy smile on her face.  
“She said I’d meet my true love, or something. Like, soon, as in tomorrow. I don’t think so. I’ve already convinced myself I’m gonna die alone, anyway,” she snorted, an amused grin spreading across her soft features.  
“Hey, don’t say that!” Tulisa snapped. She was a petite girl, though she showed much more passion than most others did - maybe it made up for her lack of height. But it charmed people, mostly men, many of which she’d had a bite of. Her love life wasn’t lacking in the slightest, and she was absolutely sure that none of her friends’ were either, despite most of their complete disinterest in finding someone to settle down with. “You’ll find someone! I’m sure of it! I’ll fight someone if it’s not true.”  
The taller blonde next to her smiled supportingly. “Yeah - I mean, all of the reviews on this place were positive. You have to have a little bit of faith.”  
“Eleanor, I thought you didn’t believe in this sort of stuff?” Katherine scoffed, pouting. The college sophomore - younger than the rest of them, yet somehow taller - was cynical and realistic; her Applied Sciences major made her completely closed to ridiculous ideas, but if she was agreeing with Tulisa - unrealistic, fantasy-driven Tulisa - on something totally unbelievable and unproved…  
Well, maybe believing might be worth a shot.  
Speaking of shots, Katherine had a hankering for a bit of alcohol that night, feeling tired but energetic enough to get drunk and maybe have some sort of intoxicated epiphany of It is true! I’ll find my Prince Charming! I won’t die alone! like she usually did, and then be struck with a pang of hope that would last until she sobered up.  
“I don’t know. Just think about it.”  
Katherine sighed. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go already - my brain’s craving a margarita and whiny rich girls.”

A coherent Katherine should have known that drinking three canned mango margaritas and then taking two shots of vodka after eating three quarters of a pint of ice cream straight from the tub wouldn’t give her the most pleasant morning the next day, but she didn’t care after remembering that her family had a history of high metabolisms and hangovers so faint that it barely felt like they were there.  
Unfortunately, though, her dumb body had decided to inherit her mom’s traits instead of her father’s, and she woke up on the floor next to Tulisa’s couch with burning pain and regret.  
Her body ached with her hangover, head pulsing and hurting more than her stomach did when it did - and for once in a long time, she genuinely wanted to die rather than live through the actual living hell that was a heavy hangover. Curse her mother’s genes for entering her body and ruining what would have been a fairly pleasant morning, what with the birds and the sunlight gently seeping in through the windows onto three college girls who looked similar to the victims of a frat party, despite them not actually attending any frat parties.  
They were never invited, anyway. Drinking and laughing and crying over a good old episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians satisfied them more than sweaty bodies and amateur grinding and fuckboys ever would.  
Despite this, Katherine oddly wished that she was at a frat party - one with a sober person awake, already making hangover smoothies and burgers for everyone instead of her friends, passed out in various states of disarray, one with her shirt rolled up and the other drooling on her arm. Her head hurt, and she really didn’t feel like standing up to walk to the fridge and sort through old pasta leftovers and boxes of Chinese food and stale rice to find her ingredients, but her situation betrayed her, and she was left to do these things all on her own.  
Weirdly enough, she felt more lonely making hangover remedies for herself on a Sunday morning than the night after a bad break up.  
It felt like something out of a movie; having the sunlight shine on your face after you drank so much alcohol that the world felt like it was spinning, having the sounds of chirping birds enter your ears after the last thing you heard was the sound of a woman ugly crying and others laughing their intoxicated selves into a state of unconsciousness. It felt surreal to open the freezer, focused on finding one specific tub of ice cream, absolutely sure that you put it back in its icy home after eating straight from it, and not seeing it in its usual place.  
Wait.  
Oh, if there was any God out there, couldn’t they just summon a pint of peanut butter cup ice cream for this poor, poor college student with a headache?  
Katherine groaned loudly and bent over the breakfast counter separating Tulisa’s living room from her kitchen, and felt her feelings well up so strongly that she groaned even louder when she saw a paper tub of a chocolaty, peanut-buttery, drippy mess of melted ice cream sitting on a now-ruined glass coffee table. What a disgrace. What an utter disgrace.  
She changed her mind - she didn’t care about a benevolent God. She wanted to punch whoever the hell caused drunk Katherine to leave a tub of her favorite ice cream flavor out to melt, but as alluring as the idea of laying on the floor and distressing over her now-broken post-drinking ritual was, it would be much more satisfying to get her ass out of the house and buy the supplies needed to complete it rather than whining about not being able to, despite having the resources within reach.  
Her love for peanut butter cups and vanilla ice cream with streaks of fudge outweighed her headache, and besides, wasn’t exercise good for hangovers?

The walk to the supermarket felt unusually long, despite it just being down the street from Tulisa’s cheap apartment, but it was probably the sun’s slowly warming rays beating down on Katherine’s dark hair that made the walk feel like she was taking a quick stroll to Paris from Berlin. She trudged down the sidewalk, immediately starting to feel the regret kick in as her sweatpants started feeling a lot sweatier than usual, and her white t-shirt feeling like a winter coat. If only she could take it off without getting arrested for public indecency - for once, she felt a strong hatred towards gender roles in society.  
She couldn’t even put her hair up in a ponytail, either, since there was no band to be found on her wrist. And even if there was one, she assumed that her messy hair was far past the title of ‘tameable,’ after all - dark locks kept falling into her eyes, and no matter how many times she tried combing it with her fingers, the curls wouldn’t subside. According to her phone camera and her beauty standards (which weren’t very high in the first place), she looked like an absolute mess.  
But it wasn’t like she was going anywhere special, so it didn’t matter, anyway. (It did.)

The first step inside the fragrant, air-conditioned supermarket was literally a breath of fresh air for Katherine - or not, seeing as the ACs technically brought in unnaturally tampered-with warm air, but it felt just as nice. The smell of fresh bread wafted through the air, accompanied by the pleasant sound of employees talking. She was thankful that this supermarket wasn’t as commercialized as most others; it was family-owned, supporting the local economy instead of sending financial sacrifices to the gods of corporate slaves. All of the bakery items were made on-site, using a family recipe, and the aura was nothing less than hospitable as she passed through the well-stocked aisles. Her headache was fading, and it was putting her in a better mood, albeit her still being plagued by the fact that she had oh-so-carelessly decided to leave her ice cream out to melt.  
She honestly sounded like an annoyed five year old whining about it, but she didn’t really care; ice cream was serious business, and she needed to complete her post-alcohol routine uniformly. No, rum raisin wouldn’t work, and neither would plain vanilla - only chocolate peanut butter cup swirl would quench Katherine’s thirst. It was her old reliable, always there, patiently waiting in the freezer for her to lean on after a break up or shitty grade or just when she felt like crying over Coco for the umpteenth time in a row.  
In other words, it was her comfort food, and there was no stopping her from getting to it one way or another.  
Except for this… good looking stranger, who had just taken the last pint of it out of the freezer.  
Normally, Katherine would have just let it be - she could go to another supermarket, buy a different one - but that morning, despite her alcohol-induced angst fading along with her headache, she was not in the mood for it. Even if this guy was tall, and had pretty eyes, and was pretty much everything she physically longed for in a man– Jesus Christ, just focus.  
“‘scuse me?” she blurted out, a little bit louder than she had intended, but at that point she didn’t care because she was going to complain about the lack of empathy this guy had for a poor hungover college kid whether she caused a public disturbance or not. He looked surprised and turned to her, a perpetual frown glued to his face as he was so rudely disturbed from his apparent date with her ice cream. “Do you mind if I take that ice cream? It’s kind of like, super important right now.”  
“And why should I?”  
Oh my God.  
Couldn’t this guy just give it to her? Like a nice person? And she asked nicely, too, even though she could have just pried it out of his hands and made a break for it down the aisle and back to the registers. She was already absolutely done and he’d only said four words, with some uppity-uppity tone that made him sound like he was superior.  
Annoying.  
“Because?” Katherine questioned, eyebrows scrunching together as her last three functioning brain cells tried to figure out what the hell this dude’s problem was. She couldn’t excuse him for being an ass just because he was pretty.  
“Because what?” His shapely eyebrows narrowed similarly to hers, albeit somehow more refined. Hell, everything about him was more refined - it took Katherine a few seconds to realize that not only was this tall man with pretty dark eyes attractive, he was also well groomed, his dark brown hair perfectly styled and his white button-up unwrinkled and his dressy black pants all crisp and washed and–  
“Oh my God, it’s six in the morning, for the love of all that is holy!” she said. Her irritation was getting laced into her words tighter and tighter, and this– this douche seemed to be amused by it! Amused! That stupid, douche-y smirk on his face, even though it was subtle, set the girl off. She groaned loudly, hissing angrily while she aggressively tapped the shining floor. She was gonna have a fit. A fit, right in the middle of that supermarket, under the fluorescent lights highlighting her sweat and making her look… some way in all the wrong ways. “Please! Please, for God’s sake, I am begging - no, beseeching you to just hand over that freaking tub of ice cream. I’m tired, and I probably look like trash next your crisp ass, and I know that you probably think that because you’re so fucking hot I’ll let you off, but no, sir, you assume incorrectly, because my tired fucking hungover broke-ass college student body is yearning for that ice cream you have in your hands!”  
Unsurprisingly, the ‘crisp ass’ was speechless at Katherine’s short monologue. It was a sudden fit of passion, driven by months of aching over tests and a deep hunger for comfort food that kept her grounded even when it felt like she could just wilt and die.  
Miraculously, the pretty man reluctantly held it out, lips pursed and with pity clouding his eyes. He sighed, wistfully in a way, looking upon the ice cream as if it was his most prized possession that he was selling off. Katherine smiled. Her hands reached out to take it from the stranger when, for a second, their fingers brushed, and for one reason or another, she felt a chill run up her spine.  
And it lingered after he wouldn’t let go.  
For a moment, she started thinking.  
‘Holy shit, what if that crazy lady was right? Maybe I won’t die alone! Maybe this guy is gonna end up being some cool as shit dude who’s all romantic and shit and takes me out on nice dates and then I’ll get married and live in a nice suburban neighborhood with two kids and a dog and a nice yard and fellow mom friends and then go out on dates for every anniversary and–’  
Her rampant thoughts were interrupted by the lack of warmth on her skin and the man in front of her clearing his throat. “Just… take it. You’re a mess. Make sure I never see you in public like this again.” His tone was quick, straight to the point as he avoided making eye contact even with Katherine’s pointed gaze up at his sheepish face. For a second, she started suspecting that his words had more meaning to them than she realized, but she decided that overthinking the words of the pretty stranger at the grocery store wasn’t the best thing to do in that situation.  
“Sure. Thanks, dude.”

The walk to the cash register was a slow one as Katherine recounted her encounter with Ice Cream Man, even if she had already told herself not to think about it. He was just… an interesting person, she thought, justifying her self-rebellion. It wouldn’t hurt to reminisce about the weird guy at Holman’s who was perfectly dressed at six o’clock in the morning in the middle of summer. He was weird. It was okay to think about weird people. It would help her understand him better, right?  
But the thing is, she didn’t know why she wanted to understand him better. She might have still been slightly hungover and woozy from her lack of good sleep, but she knew that normally she wouldn’t have given a flying fuck about some guy who took her ice cream away from her. It wasn’t like he did anything particularly special, either; he just… existed. He existed in the freezer aisle with his good looks, and handed over the ice cream with a look on his face that, Katherine had to admit, was cute for a weirdo who dressed like he was going to a legal ceremony so early in the morning.  
Whatever. Whatever. Whatever will be, will be. Que sera, sera, like in that one crazy eighties movie that Katherine forgot the name of. Maybe he’d end up being her true love, maybe he wouldn’t, and she promised herself that if he wasn’t she wouldn’t be disappointed. After all, he was just some attractive guy at the supermarket who was (partially) nice to her. Anybody could be nice to her and be attractive at the same time.  
Then again, whenever someone attractive and within her age group was nice to her, she ended up developing a momentary crush on them.  
Gah, why was she like this?  
Katherine couldn’t even look up at the cashier in fear that she was attractive. She sounded young, and honestly, after mulling over her habits, she wasn’t going to take any more chances of crushing on someone that she wouldn’t even be able to kiss. It was useless, anyway, the brunette thought as the cashier scanned her ice cream tub. Why was she hoping that she would find her true love after addressing (out loud) the day before that she knew she would die alone? It was that old lady’s heebie-jeebie shit, probably! Maybe she was actually some genius trained in the act of mental manipulation. Maybe that’s why Katherine was thinking like this.  
“‘Scuse me? Miss? The ice cream is seven dollars and ninety-nine cents.”  
Out of habit and trained politeness, Katherine glanced up at the cashier and thank God, she was only average and not meant for Vogue. The ice cream was overpriced, sure, but she forced herself to believe it was worth it; her perceived notions of perfection in a routine were worth much more than almost ten dollars pulled out of her already lacking bank account, so it was fine. She flashed a tired smile at the cashier and ducked a hand into her pocket to fish out her credit card before she was pushed over by a familiar crisp white shirt sleeve.  
Jesus fuck, it was Ice Cream Man. Ice Cream Man with a permanent light grimace on his annoyingly perfect face, pushing her to the side to hand over a five dollar off coupon to a very smitten looking cashier who probably thought this man was just as attractive as Katherine did.  
“You already look like a broke slob, and I won’t allow you to stupidly waste your money on frozen milk when you could be using it to dress properly,” he said, watching the cashier scan the coupon.  
Well, god damn, Mr. Businessman, it wasn’t like it was six in the fucking morning and she was buying a tub of goddamn ice cream.  
Though, it was hard to focus on being mad when he was watching her with such a curious expression.  
She followed him out the automatic sliding doors and into the parking lot, where the sun was already starting to highlight dozens of empty parking spots, the shopping carts already lined up in their area, and her temporary companion’s high cheekbones and shiny dark hair. He sighed, taking a glance forward then tilting his head back down to the girl in front of him, mouth opening to say something that Katherine hoped wasn’t a snarky comment.  
“Please, for the love of God, take care of yourself,” he said quietly. Was that a hint of compassion in his tone?  
“I can’t deal with unruly idiots right before a convention. And you owe me for the ice cream, by the way, if we ever meet again.”  
Ah. Never mind.  
Once again, the ice cream was exchanged with delicate hands and tingles on touched skin, accompanied by an awkwardly comfortable silence that shouldn’t have been so comfortable since Katherine had only just met this man, but maybe they matched like puzzle pieces: built to fit together and complete… something, or whatever.  
Ah, there she went with her daydreaming again.  
“Yeah, sure,” Katherine snorted, fully aware of her less-than-presentable appearance. Her mind, still mulling over the man’s words, stopped on a certain part of his sentence. “Wait, convention? What? What convention?”  
He sighed and rolled his eyes at her. “There’s a convention a few towns over for college students looking into careers regarding international business. If you’re thinking about going, you’re not in luck; it’s invite-only.”  
Oh, so fancy-pants had a reason to be dressed this way. Still, though, he was uptight and annoying. ‘Invite-only’– who cared? Why did he have to say that? Was he so far up his ass that he felt the need to explain that detail to people he saw as inferior?  
Ugh, God. But he had a right to be smart. Of course he was a business major. Of course he was.  
“I wasn’t, actually, but whatever.” Katherine let out a tired, pitiful mix of a groan and sigh, blinking out the tiredness that threatened to form in her eyes again. “But, like, you said that I owe you for the ice cream?”  
The stranger - well, was he really a stranger after Katherine had already had one and half conversations with him in less than two hours? - nodded. “Correct.”  
“Well, if I have to pay you back, I’m gonna need some way to like… talk to you, right? Here’s my phone - just put your number in and I’ll get to you.”  
And that’s how Katherine ended up in front of a family-owned-and-operated grocery store, looking like a sad, sad mess of a woman in sweatpants and messy hair, exchanging phone numbers with a prim and proper business major who would look natural on the cover of Vogue.  
The exchange was brief, neither of them wanting to be caught loitering and the stranger - who she learned was named ‘Adrian,’ after glancing at his contact on her phone - was not at all willing to be late to his ‘extremely important convention that I would much rather be at than a depressing grocery store talking to a drunkard.’ Drunkard? That was a new one.  
But as Katherine walked back to her friend’s apartment, cold ice cream in hand, she felt her phone vibrate and glanced down to read the message that came up.

Adrian (6:47am): i hope you arrived home safely.  
Adrian (6:47am): i’m expecting seven dollars from you the next time we meet, which, hopefully, will be next saturday at 2 at the cafe by the grocery store. i’ll see you?

Katherine smiled, and shot back a ‘yes’ before arriving at Tulisa’s apartment with a dumb grin on her face.  
Maybe the cafe would be special to her in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> sigh. maybe i'll make this a two-shot if enough people like my kids.  
> please comment with feedback!! ^^


End file.
